Ethical Decision-Making Confidence and Professional Values Among Nurse Leaders.

OBJECTIVES: The aims of this study were to describe differences in nurse leaders' ethical decision-making confidence and their professional values based on identified characteristics and to explore the relationship between ethical decision making and professional values. BACKGROUND: Nurse leaders have multiple duties and obligations toward their patients, other staff, and the organizations where they work. However, ethical decisions can be complex, requiring the guidance of professional values and critical appraisal of the situation. METHODS: This study was conducted using a correlational design. Convenience sampling was used, resulting in a sample of 56 nurse leaders in various positions. RESULT: Ethical decision making and professional values were found to be strongly correlated. CONCLUSION: Ethical decision making and professional values are highly correlated in this sample. Understanding the importance of the effects of certain factors on ethical decision making can assist in forming an environment supportive of ethical practices for nurses.

Another nursing is possible: Ethics, political economies, and possibility in an uncertain world.

Overtaxed by the realities laid bare in the pandemic, nursing has imminent decisions to make. The exigencies of pandemic times overextend a health care infrastructure already groaning under the weight of inequitable distribution of resources and care commodified for profit. We can choose to prioritise different values. Invoking philosopher of science Isbelle Stengers's manifesto for slow science, this is not the only nursing that is possible. With this paper, I pick up threads of nursing's historical ontology, drawing previous scholarship on the historical narratives nurses use to understand themselves. Peeling back nursing's myth to alternate points of origin allows me to consider alternate lines of flight, a speculative adventure in paths not taken but paths that exist nonetheless. I go on to examine what a collective ethic of nursing could be, when we make space for these alternate histories, considering the confluences and conflicts that enable nurses to care and those that inhibit them from doing so. The imperative for this lies in the central importance of the reproductive labour of nursing health care, which leads me to a critique of nursing's capitulation to the pressures of late stage capitalism. This is a problem with ethical and ontological implications both for nursing, and also for those who require nursing care, an imperative to think about the kinds of present/futures for health, care, and health care we might cocreate in collaboration and solidarity with the communities in which nurses are imbricated, shedding the trappings of neoliberalism. There is significant power in the vision and praxis of 28 million nurses and midwives worldwide. Our ethics can guide our imagination which can in turn create possibility. This kind of endeavour-that of dreams and imagination-leads us to what could be, if only we leap.

Embedding Nursing Ethics Within Teaching Strategies in Nurse Residency Programs.

Exposing new nurses to theoretical teaching strategies that help them to navigate the ethical challenges in clinical practice is essential for retention and long-term job satisfaction. This article explores the rationale for teaching ethics content in nurse residency programs and ways to navigate ethical decision-making in the clinical setting. Examples of evidence-informed teaching strategies that enhance knowledge retention and reduce the gap between ethical theory and practice are included.

"It Kills Your Soul": A Mixed Methods Study of Ethical Sensitivity of Critical Care Nurses.

BACKGROUND: Critically ill patients often experience distressful and impactful symptoms and conditions that include pain, agitation/sedation, delirium, immobility, and sleep disturbances (PADIS). The presence of PADIS can affect recovery and long-term patient outcomes. An integral part of critical care nursing is PADIS prevention, assessment, and management. Ethical sensitivity of everyday nursing practice related to PADIS is an imperative part of implementing evidence-based care for patients. OBJECTIVE: The first 2 aims of this study were to determine the measured level of ethical awareness as an attribute of ethical sensitivity among the critical care nurse participants and to explore the ethical sensitivity of critical care nurses related to the implementation of PADIS care. The third aim was to examine how the measured level of ethical awareness and ethical sensitivity exploration results converge, diverge, and/or relate to each other to produce a more complete understanding of PADIS ethical sensitivity by critical care nurses. METHODS: This was a convergent parallel mixed methods study (QUAL + quant). Ethical sensitivity was explored by conducting an ethnography of critical care nurses. The participants were 19 critical care nurses who were observed during patient care, interviewed individually, participated in a focus group (QUAL), and were administered the Ethical Awareness Scale (quant). FINDINGS: Despite high levels of individual ethical awareness among nurses, themes of ambiguous beneficence, heedless autonomy, and moral distress were found to be related to PADIS care. CONCLUSIONS: More effort is needed to establish moral community, ethical leadership, and individual ethical guidance for nurses to establish patient-centered decision-making and PADIS care.

Christian Ethical Foundations of Modern Nursing in China.

ABSTRACT: The influence of Western Christian missionary nurses has been recorded in the history and development of nursing in China. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of Christianity on Chinese nursing ethics. This documentary research used content analysis to investigate Christian value trends over 13 years (1920-1932) as reflected in a major bilingual Chinese nursing journal.

Nurses' moral courage and related factors: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Nurses face various ethical conflicts when taking care of patients, and such conflicts require moral courage. This systematic review was conducted with the aim of investigating moral courage and its related factors among nurses. METHODS: To find related studies, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were followed. The PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus, Embase and Science Direct databases were searched using keywords such as Courage, Moral Courage, and Nurses, and no lower time limit was imposed when conducting the searches. The identified studies were published between January 2000 and March 2023. Quality of articles was assessed using the STROBE checklist. RESULTS: The pooled sample size for the 19 included studies was 7863. All studies were observational and cross-sectional. The results showed that three categories of factors most related to moral courage are individual, moral, and factors related to the organization. Underlying factors of each category are also provided within this paper. CONCLUSION: Moral courage is an integral part of nursing, which as a profession, is becoming even more challenging with the advancement of science and technology. Therefore, there is a need for nurses and especially nursing managers to be considerate of factors affecting moral courage of nurses, with a view to strengthening the positive factors and reducing the negative impacts.

Pediatric Nurses' Experiences With Professional Boundaries and Ethical Challenges: A Secondary Analysis.

Pediatric nursing is known to be challenging in relation to balancing care and relationships with children and families. There is a growing body of knowledge about the perspectives of the various aspects of care; nurses' thoughts and perspectives, parents' needs and desire for collaboration, and the continued care and support required are related. This article is a secondary analysis of data collected using the theoretical framework and methodology of Margaret Newman's Health as Expanding Consciousness to understand how pediatric nurses develop knowledge. Interviews were conducted with eight pediatric nurses working in inpatient settings with children and families experiencing chronic, complex healthcare needs. The nurses, whose experience spanned between 3 and 30 years, related to stories of how their view of practice evolved over time and with experiences and the challenges to professional boundaries and ethical practice. Reflection on these experiences brought nurses to acknowledge sometimes crossing professional boundaries and struggling with ethical issues. Ultimately, reflections brought appreciation of lessons learned and evolution of the understanding of their role in the care of these children and families.

From informed to empowered consent.

Informed consent is ethically incomplete and should be redefined as empowered consent. This essay challenges theoretical assumptions of the value of informed consent in light of substantial evidence of its failure in clinical practice and questions the continued emphasis on autonomy as the primary ethical justification for the practice of consent in health care. Human dignity-rather than autonomy-is advanced from a nursing ethics perspective as a preferred justification for consent practices in health care. The adequacy of an ethic of obligation (namely, principlism) as the dominant theoretical lens for recognising and responding to persistent problems in consent practices is also reconsidered. A feminist empowerment framework is adopted as an alternative ethical theory to principlism and is advanced as a more practical and complete lens for examining the concept and context of consent in health care. To accomplish this, the three leading conceptions of informed consent are overviewed, followed by a feminist critique to reveal practical problems with each of them. The need for a language change from informed to empowered consent is strongly considered. Implications for consent activities in clinical practice are reviewed with focused discussion on the need for greater role clarity for all involved in consent-beyond and inclusive of the patient-physician dyad, as the practice and improvement of consent is necessarily a transdisciplinary endeavour. Specific concrete and practical recommendations for leveraging nursing expertise in this space are presented. Perhaps what is most needed in the discourse and practice of consent in health care is nursing.

[Using restraint during treatment: Definitions, contexts and benchmarks]. / User de la contention au cours d'un soin : définitions, contextes et repères.

The clinical practice of nursing sometimes leads to physically restraining the patient while carrying out a therapeutic or diagnostic procedure. This laconic observation says little about the many questions raised by the use of restraint on a person during treatment. The questions are professional, institutional, philosophical, ethical, legal and deontological. The role of the nurse in the decision to use coercion to provide care is preponderant, and the moral dilemmas that this decision provokes are most often carried out individually by the professionals.

Re-examining the relationship between moral distress and moral agency in nursing.

In recent years, the phenomenon of moral distress has been critically examined-and for a good reason. There have been a number of different definitions suggested, some that claimed to be consistent with the original definition but in fact referred to different epistemological states. In this paper, we re-examine moral distress by exploring its relationship with moral agency. We critically examine three conceptions of moral agency and argue that two of these conceptions risk placing nurses' values at the center of moral action when it ought to be the patient's values that shape nurses' obligations. We propose that the conception of moral agency advanced by Aimee Milliken which re-centers patient values, should be more broadly accepted within nursing. We utilize a case example to demonstrate a situation in which the values of a patient's parents (surrogates) justifiably constrained nurses' moral agency, creating moral distress. Through an examination of constraints on nurse agency in this case, we illustrate the problematic nature of 'narrow' moral distress and the value of re-considering moral distress.  Finally, we provide an action-oriented proposal identifying mediating steps that we argue have utility for nurses (and other healthcare professionals) to mediate between experiences of narrow moral distress and the exercise of moral agency.

Characteristics of a good nurse as perceived by nurses.

BACKGROUND: Nursing is a humanitarian and social field that provides health services. It combines science and art and has a rich history. Despite fundamental changes in the provision of medical services and nursing education, the concept of "good nurse" is still unclear. PURPOSE: The purpose of this article is to investigate the characteristics of a good nurse from the nurses' perspective. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHOD: A qualitative study was applied using conventional content analysis. The participants were 30 nurses that selected with purposive sampling method. Data were collected through unstructured interviews and simultaneously analyzed via the conventional content analysis approach of Graneheim and Lundman. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences, Iran. FINDINGS: The study revealed that personal characteristics (Adherence to ethical and human principles, Physical health, Attractive appearance, and Ability to communicate properly); and professional characteristics (knowledge - clinical skill - nursing roles) are essential to being a good nurse. CONCLUSION: Coming to know the distinctive features of a good nurse as perceived by nurses themselves creates an opportunity for nurses to rethink their profession and to reflect on the characteristics of the good nurse.

Brave spaces in nursing ethics education: Courage through pedagogy.

BACKGROUND: Nursing students must graduate prepared to bravely enact the art and science of nursing in environments infiltrated with ethical challenges. Given the necessity and moral obligation of nurses to engage in discourse within nursing ethics, nursing students must be provided a moral supportive learning space for these opportunities. Situating conversations and pedagogy within a brave space may offer a framework to engage in civil discourse while fostering moral courage for learners. RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The aim of this research is to explore the influence of a structured self-assessment tool called the ESA "Engagement Self-Assessment" on the alignment and creation of a brave space in a nursing ethics course. RESEARCH DESIGN: This study used an exploratory, cross-sectional survey design. PARTICIPANTS AND STUDY SETTING: Data from 39 undergraduate nursing students enrolled in a nursing healthcare ethics & law course using the ESA were recruited. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: Participation was voluntary and informed without coercion. Written consent was obtained prior to participation. Research ethics approval was obtained by the Institutional Research Ethics Board of the recruited participants (Ethics # 2022-23-03). FINDINGS: The ESA provided structured self-reflection on the impact of shared vulnerability within a brave space. However, commitment to a brave space was not strongly influenced by the ESA, but rather by a mutual "commitment to others." CONCLUSION: A teaching tool such as an ESA can be used to facilitate instructor expectations of civil discourse and discussion of difficult topics. Rules of engagement such as those found in brave spaces can help transform fear of vulnerability into authentic growth for learners. A morally supportive learning space can support critical opportunities for ethical development. This study provides insight into how self-assessment and the use of a brave space in nursing ethics education can facilitate a morally supportive learning space.

Am I my students' nurse? Reflections on the nursing ethics of nursing education.

Despite having worked in higher education for over twenty years, I am still, first and foremost, a practicing nurse. My employer requires me to be a nurse and my regulator regards what I do as nursing. My practice is regulated by the Code and informed by nursing ethics. If I am nurse, practicing nursing, does that mean that my students are my patients? This paper considers how the relationship that I have with my students can be informed by the ethics of the nurse/patient relationship. After some initial theoretical preparation concerning argument from analogy, the paper identifies some areas for comparison between the two relationships. Areas of similarity and difference identify two areas of concern: Nurse education and educators regularly engage in coercion and surveillance in an attempt to increase student success, both of which would be considered outside nursing ethics. It is concluded that these coercive practices are not conducive to an environment where character is cultivated. Despite current financial and workforce pressures, nurse lecturers and more especially their managers would do well to return to the professional ethics of nursing to question and guide their practice.

Influences of the Arts and Nurse Ethics.

Art has limitless definitions, meanings, and modes for presentation. It is a pivotal cocreation designed to provoke and stir up artists' personal beliefs, values, and thinking. Art is uniquely received by those persons experiencing it in the moment. The author in this article illuminates the significance of the arts with the enduring ethical truths found in nursing paradigms and theoretical frameworks. The humanbecoming ethos is used to illustrate the importance of the arts in human living and its future implications for the advancement of the discipline of nursing.

The ethics of nursing care for transgender people.

OBJECTIVES: to discuss ethical aspects in nursing care for transgender people. METHODS: reflective study based on the dilemmas that emerges in nursing care for transgender people. The report was structured around the four bioethical principles. RESULTS: health care for trans people is complex, transversal to many devices and specialties and longitudinal in time, that is why it requires coordinated action. There is an ethical framework in which the nursing care must be observed in the care of this group. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS: the nurse as a health worker can assume several general lines in the care of transgender patients. So, complementary training should be provided not only to professionals, but also to students of nursing and other health sciences.

Overview of nursing ethics teaching in Brazilian public higher education institutions.

OBJECTIVES: to outline the teaching of ethics in undergraduate Nursing programs in Brazilian public higher education institutions. METHODS: descriptive and exploratory study, carried out through the documentary analysis of pedagogical projects of undergraduate Nursing programs in Brazil. RESULTS: 153 active undergraduate Nursing programs were found, of which 106 provide the pedagogical project. In addition to deontological teaching, the teaching of ethics was identified in a transversal way associated with themes such as Social Context, Hospital and Community Care, Pharmacology, Systematization of Nursing Care, Surgical Nursing, Epidemiology, Palliative Care, Management in Nursing, Diversity, Women's, Children's, Adolescent's, Adult's and Older People's Health, and Mental Health. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS: the challenge in teaching nursing ethics is its integration with each action of caring, teaching and managing.